The highlight of the last few months has been working with MinVayu. MinVayu's founder, Jorge Ayarza is an US/Ecuadorian wind expert, based in Auroville India who has come up with an interesting analysis.

Jorge believes that by designing a small (350W-1kW) turbine for the low-winds of India, and by training local mechanics that he has a scalable, affordable, solution to providing wind power to under-served rural communities. I spent a month with Jorge, helping to refine his business model and in particular to integrate the learnings from the pilot run of the training workshops.

A rural community education center in nearby village is now powered by a turbine constructed during the workshop, and is performing well. However we believe that by thinking about the whole system rather than just the turbine we can make some substantial improvements and drop the overall system cost another 35% which would make wind cheaper than solar in many even low wind locations.

The opportunity presented by a system that is cheaper than current Solar Home Systems is substantial with the potential to create a business that meets the magic target of being both highly profitable and having a high impact.